Posted on 01/21/2006 10:26:44 AM PST by voletti
WASHINGTON: More than half of students at four-year colleges in the United States - and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges - lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found. The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills - no matter their field of study. The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips. Without “proficient” skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school. “It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they’re not going to be able to do those things,” said Stephane Baldi, the study’s director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization. Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills. That means they can do moderately challenging tasks, such as identifying a location on a map. There was brighter news. Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytimes.com.pk ...
Well, thank God their precious self esteem is still intact.
Me: "32oz diet soda please" HS Senior clerk: "umm...Is that small, medium or large?" Me: "Well, I don't know. Is your 32oz soda the medium one or the large one?" HS Senior Clerk: "uhhhhhhhhhhh.... HS Senior Manager: "Here, I'll hold them up for you" Me: "Um...Nevermind"
"If you want a degree, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library." --- Paul H. Gettles
That is a valid point about the elderly getting graduate degrees. Even the younger ones, say a mid-twenties with a fresh MS in biology, who has not been working all along, may indeed get a job with the state but will never actually contribute anything except to his own retirement package.
Interesting to contrast public schools now with public schools of the early 20'th century. I remember reading the book 'Truman' by David McCullough. Truman completed High School and could both read and write ancient Greek.
1) 4
2) 4 > 2 > 3 > 1
If understanding credit card offers is considered a complex task, then we're in real trouble.
What's to understand about credit card offers? Get one card, pay it off monthly and throw the rest in the trash.
My MS Word grammar checker says that I should change "effect" to "affect" in the following sentence: "The car's brakes had no effect whatsoever." Which is correct? Effect? Or affect?
I know what you mean. I always thought I was a terrible writer. Now everybody tells me I'm a really good writer. Now, I'm not sure if I'm getting better or if everybody else is getting worse. I didn't think that was possible.
You said: My MS Word grammar checker says that I should change "effect" to "affect" in the following sentence: "The car's brakes had no effect whatsoever." Which is correct? Effect? Or affect?
***
Assuming you are serious about this question, "affect" is seldom if ever a noun. Effect almost always is a noun, although it can be a verb, such as in the sentence, "He hoped to effect a change in their behavior with his encouragement." [Not a professional writer, just a lawyer-- and not a personal injury or criminal defense one, either]
What was not possible? "[Almost] everybody else getting worse"? - Eminently possible. You getting better?- that'd be much more tricky, and would be possible only with continuous and concentrated effort on your part.
NO surprise. 50 years of dumbing down and liberalizing education takes its toll.
Point well taken. I would point out that Booker T. Washington in his book "Up From Slavery" mentioned the same sort of thing in re: education of the Negro [to use his term] in the second half of the 19th century.
While I don't have the direct quote in front of me, it ran something along the lines of how Negro youth, were being taught a form of education "both of them inconvenient and one of them dangerous". He said that since Negroes at that time earned their keep by unskilled, manual labor (waiters, washerwomen, etc.) education should focus on how to work better, more efficiently, more business-like, at those jobs so to advance them, i.e, go from a washerwoman to a micro-business owner who employees two other washerwomen; go from being a wait to being a headwaiter and perhaps even a matrie d'hotel.
However the "liberal arts" education that was being given the Negro youth -- handwriting, geography, science,Latin,etc. -- ended up both boring the youth (hence the high drop out rate)and causing in them a contempt for manual labor and the long, slow climb up the economic ladder.
One result of this was that a huge number of young Negro girls, esp. in big cities, turned to prostitution*. In exchange for "putting out" they got money, attention, and nice, flashy things: like feather boas, silk stocking, and dressed that sparkled when they walked. You know, the kind(s) of things they felt they deserved b/c they had had an education.
(* And youths in to crime)
Boy, would this generation be in trouble with personal accounts for retirement!!
In your sentence, "effect" is correct.
My version of Word (Office 2000) doesn't do that. Check your Autocorrect list (under the Tools menu) to see if someone has added "affect" and "effect" to the list.
You ever read excerpts from journals, letters, and personal correspondece from Civil War soldiers? The 'common man' knew how to write very well and very movingly, with references that would be way above the head of even the modern most elitist readers.
I think 18-year-olds should have a year or so of a dead-end job in the real world before they go to college. I really think that with some real experiences smacking them in the face at that tender age, a lot of the BS peddled by progressive professors wouldn't pass the smell test and be challenged.
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